Papillons at Multitudes was a multimedia production that mirrored the transformation of caterpillars to butterflies across three miniatures which over the course of 70 minutes saw a sonic metamorphosis of cellist Laura van der Heijden’s playing from amplified strings to electronic distortion.
CHAINES, Thick and Tight and Manchester Collective joined forces with the Camberwell Incredibles for the concluding event in Southbank Multitudes Festival on Thursday evening. The earnest multimedia production mirrored the transformation of caterpillars to butterflies in three separate works which over the course of the 70 minutes saw a sonic metamorphosis of cellist Laura van der Heijden’s playing from amplified strings to electronic distortion. Much was demanded of the musician who, aside from a brief pause for two pre-recorded inserts, provided a musical spine for a playlist event that took in Imogen Holst’s melancholic The Fall of the Leaf, the haunting beauty of Saariaho’s 7 Butterflies accompanied by movement from dancers Thick and Tight, and CHAINES new work oysters sing of silkworms.
The theatrics of dance and accessibility best practice in the form of sensory descriptions were innovatively deployed, inclusivity stimulating a playful use of audio and visual descriptions. The mid-performance pivot featured an amusing poke at the pre-performance talk, a pre-recorded interview between composer and cellist mimed by the dancers on stage to great effect. Charming and endearing, it subverted concert-going conventions. Official photography doesn’t capture this moment.
The question that remains whether this was true subversion was an opportunity tick a number of boxes. Opening the performance, CHAINES strides proudly across the stage as their voice track introduces them, their pronouns, and lays out the artistic premise for the hour to follow — a bid to explore the gap between composer and musical expert — before laying down nonchalantly as though on a picnic in late summer, the cellist next to them seemingly serenading them with the work they had created. Their proximity felt arch bordering on the laboured. A scripted introduction from all the cast trod a fine line between warmth and smug self-satisfaction, the overarching need to delineate difference collapsing into its own form of conformity.
Nonetheless, there was warmth in the room. The clarity of descriptions, the gentleness of voices, and the beauty found in the interplay of sound and physical movement made this an event that would have served the Southbank better had the powers that be programmed it closer to the start of Multitudes than at the end. Video inserts from The Camberwell Incredibles were the most potent of contributions, providing a much-needed community feel to what might have felt like a heavily authored and paradoxically agenda-driven narrative.
Two days on, the work leaves questions just like good art should. CHAINES remained on stage throughout, incrementally changing the sound of the live music to create something of their own. In exploring the gap between interested party and expert, the interpreter subsumed by an a more powerful agent controlling events — the composer an all-powerful manipulator of reality. Are we celebrating inclusion, or unwittingly colluding with something greater which could easily go south? In responding to the clarity of communication experienced amongst those contributors with learning disabilities, are we celebrating them or being condescending?
